Morning
by TeaNSympathy
Summary: After leaving his job at the SDNY, Roger Gunn takes a well-deserved day off.


It's been years since Roger has slept past six. Even on weekends he is usually up with the sun, exercising and preparing for the day. When he opens his eyes and sees that it is half past nine, he has a moment of panic before he remembers that he has told Delap he won't be in that day. There were a great many other things he would have liked to have told Delap, none of them complimentary, but in the interest of professionalism he hasn't. He has thirty days in which to wrap things up in the Mother Court- and there are an infinity of things to wrap up- but he feels entitled to this day. He's been working non-stop on the voter intimidation case and between that and the nights he's spent lying awake worrying over Jill's odd behavior he's been running on fumes for days.

She is gone when he wakes up, of course- no day off for her- but the pillow still bears the indentation of her head and the faint floral smell of her shampoo wafts deliciously in the air. He stretches, basking for a moment in the luxurious feeling of waking up rested for once. He never sleeps well when she isn't there. He knows she can take care of herself, probably better than most, but the thought of her going home late at night to her tiny apartment in a sketchier street on the Upper East Side always worries him. He knows too much about the worse elements of New York to ever put much faith in the safety of strangers.

Her vanilla-flavored chapstick sits on the nightstand, along with her hand lotion, her water bottle, and the book she'd been reading. Over the months since they'd first gotten together, those items have become something of a barometer to him. When she's planning to spend the night, they stay in place. On days when, for one reason or another, she is planning to sleep at her own apartment, they disappear and their absence always causes his heart to plummet. He hadn't asked her last night about moving in together. He figured that his decision to leave his job had given them both enough to process. But he will. Soon. Besides, they'd been so busy making up for lost time in bed. They'd both been starved for each other, after all the days apart.

He smells coffee. He is usually the one who makes it, rising well before Jill who is not, to say the least, a morning person. Following the smell into the kitchen he finds, in addition to the fragrant pot, a freshly made kale smoothie in the fridge in a plastic tumbler. Taped to it is a note "Enjoy this – if the word can truly apply to anything that tastes so vile. Call me when you wake up. I'll see you tonight. I love you. Jill" He reads the note twice, the last sentence a few times more, and smiles, slipping it into his bathrobe pocket. She'd said it last night, murmuring the three words into his neck as he held her close in her office. She'd said it later in bed, a sleepy whisper as she'd nestled her head on his shoulder, both of them limp and exhausted from lovemaking. But this is different. This is black ink on white paper, the words in her bold, determined handwriting so clear in the pale morning sunlight shining through the window. This is tangible evidence that on this first day of the rest of his uncharted life, Jill Carlan loves Roger Gunn.

Roger regrets many things in his life. He regrets the few nights he hadn't spent studying in law school – it still rankles that he'd been third in his class and not first. He regrets the swatting press conference. He regrets attending that wedding all those years ago (the image of the disturbing ice sculpture still refuses to vacate his mind). He can't regret marrying Renee because it brought him Maggie and Noelle, but he definitely regrets the way it ended. He regrets the missed school plays and softball games, and all the nights he got home too late to see his daughters before bed. He regrets decisions he's made about cases, so many of them, the ones he chose to prosecute and the ones he didn't. But one thing he knows with unmistakable certainty that he will never regret is quitting his job. For this


End file.
